Skip to main content

Why Educators Need to Become Members of Their Local Entrepreneurial Community

I just returned from ThincIowa in Des Moines- a two day gathering of entrepreneurs and creatives who learned and connected TED-style.

By day two I was hit with one of those revelations that send a shock through your system - a moment in time when disparate pieces of thoughts, information, and understandings converge. In short, if educators don't nurture and develop a new eco-system to allow new learning environments to arise, we will continue our frustrating (and I fear ultimately fruitless) struggle to create new systems and innovations inside old and worn-out organizational constructs. So, here's 2 initial thoughts:

  1. All great ideas start out as weird. In times of massive change and disruption doing the seemingly obvious and well-refined is likely to make little difference. I'm talking order-of-magnitude change here (10x better than we have now). Steve Case spoke this week about how AOL was an idea so far outside the realm of both conventional wisdom and the evidence of the day (1986) that they were usually branded as crazy and foolish. After all, the wisdom and data pointed to the internet never being mainstream but rather for scientists and geeks - no seriously - this was the belief.
  2. Organic eco-systems, not directed hierarchies, win the future. Brad Feld, (see his cool short video here) a man who is famous in the entrepreneurial world for building eco-systems that spawn amazing entrepreneurial communities, made this clear. If the people who are passionate and "in-the-work" don't lead it, it doesn't live. The "feeders" - superintendents and school boards, the DE, AEA, SAI, ISBA, ISEA, colleges, and formally sanctioned think-tanks and work groups - can't lead. They can help organize, support, and mentor - but they can't own it - the leaders must. Who are the leaders? The teachers, administrators, students, and parents who are directly engaged in rapidly iterating the work and building the new frameworks must lead. Check that - the passionate and the weird.
So what's on my agenda tomorrow? Figuring out how to build the most amazing eco-system allowing innovation and rapid prototyping capable of driving 10x improvement, ultimately led and kept alive by the very members of the community, without formal leadership, membership dues and requirements, or having to figure out how to access the network. In short:
  • Let the leaders, not the feeders lead.
  • Take a long-term view - bureaucratic cycle times in government, school, college, and business - are inappropriately short for innovation. How long? 20 years. (I know, it sucks, but would you rather I lie to you?)
  • Be inclusive - everyone's invited and a healthy eco-system can easily manage the rare "bad actor" who joins for the wrong reasons.
  • Engaging and substantive issues that drive relationships, ideas, and results.
An easy place to start? Join your local entrepreneurial community and start learning - a whole new world will open for you!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Two Faces of Change

Watching the annual legislative session and the political posturing by the groups and people in power I'm constantly struck by something my doc chair said to me almost a decade ago now. "Trace, we are in an ideological war that's just as contentious as the one that birthed Newtonian science and the mechanical age. Make no mistake, the current Newtonian view of the world will not go down without a fight." He couldn't have been more right. A constant struggle for me is finding ways to assist people in bridging the gap between the old way of organizing and changing the world and the new. I find almost everyone I meet cognitively recognizes that things are different. They can use the words correctly but many struggle to recognize the implicit and cultural patterns they continue to apply to the problems we face. The beauty in all of this is that almost all are incredibly passionate and bright. It took me a decade after I was first exposed to this way of thinking a
3 comments
Read more

Reflection, fear, and the status quo

It's been awhile since I've blogged. Turns out being Associate Superintendent of Iowa's 2nd largest school district is a bit time consuming. I'm loving my new job and the opportunities the district and community are giving me to transform education. I'm busy helping our community and district have deeper conversations about learning and what "school" needs to look like and be. As I hit my 100th day mark in this new job, I'm taking a bit of time to reflect on some of the things I've been thinking about and been presented with as of late. First, and this is somewhat of a 'derp' comment, it has become rather obvious to me that the professionals able to survive and thrive in these exciting and turbulent times have one gift or skill separating them from the pack. They are highly reflective - about their practice, about the system they're in, about their contributions to the problems and solutions, and about themselves as learners and hum
Post a Comment
Read more